David didn’t end up getting into any trouble. In fact, Mom was fairly happy that he’d been there to grab the two “empty-headed morons,” before they got hurt.

Cecelia and Kado? He shook his head. Those two, not so much… The only thing that had protected them from being grounded forever had been their parents’ worry about what might have happened, so they were only grounded for two weeks, forced to stay inside their houses when they weren’t with their parents. Of course, none of that bothered David, unlike Mari… That was why she’d been so desperate to get out and see David.

“God…” he looked up to see Mari flump down in the opposite booth. She stared at the table, then looked up at David, her eyes wide. “Free me, David, please! Sweep me off my feet and take me anywhere else!” She leaned her head back into the cushioned seat and looked around at the half-empty interior of the Rocket-79, the best diner in town. At least according to the sign.

“What’s wrong?” David grinned. He knew what was wrong. Mari had been ranting about it for the last week.

“Kado’s graduated from being thankful he wasn’t sent to military school to asking when this is going to end, and Mom is holding firm, and Dad’s at work, and now he’s whining to me about using my computer and…” She paused, then stuck her hands in the air. “Take me away, please!”

“Well, it could be worse.” David glanced around the half-empty diner to make certain nobody could hear them. “I mean, if the police didn’t have a police report talking about other teens who had been seen setting off fireworks in that area, and if they hadn’t been upfront with a cell phone tower failure…”

Mari closed her eyes. “I was trying to forget about that. That was a conspiracy!” She looked around. “A conspiracy! Here!”

“Yeah,” David said. “And think about what they said. A breach. Then a realized breach. What does that mean to you?”

“Breach is simple. A hole between two places. And probably something that isn’t expected,” Mari fell silent as Judy came strolling in, accompanied by a gaggle of friends and acquaintances. She waited until they were past and then gestured at David. “But a ‘realized’ AE? For that matter, what’s an AE?”

“And they said that the Man With the Bag was what caused it to become ‘realized’.” David pulled out a notebook and ran his finger down the lines. “But I think that the breach was there first, whatever it was.”

“Going old-school?” Mari asked.

“They can’t hack a notebook.” David looked up at her. “Like they turned off our cell phones.”

“Or maybe something else turned them off, and they just covered for it…” Mari paused as the waitress strolled up.

“Ready to order?”

“Yeah, Marcy,” Mari said. “Milkshake.”

“Same,” David said.

“Two checks,” Mari added.

“You always do two checks,” Marcy said. “You know it’s not going to kill you to share…”

“But you always get a bigger tip out of it!” Mari said.

“Fine,” Marcy said, rolling her eyes as she turned to head for the counter.

David waited until Marcy was out of earshot. “So, it’s a conspiracy. And I’d like to find out a little more about it… on board for some investigations?”

----------------------------------------

Mari wished that Marcy would stop trying to get them to share their check. Sure, they were out during lunchtime at the high school, everyone just paid into one check, because that was the only way to get the food fast enough to eat it. But sharing? Just the two of them?

That’d be weird, and people would start assuming they were dating, and they weren’t and…

And David had just suggested they go conspiracy hunting.

“David…” Mari looked at her friend. “Is that really smart?”

“Tell me you aren’t curious?”

“I am. I’m also thinking that they could have just waited outside the door for, oh, five minutes, and we wouldn’t be here.” Mari shrugged. “Do you really want to, you know, get in their faces again?” She touched her T-shirt, where the cartoon flying saucer was pulling a stick-figure into the sky. "This isn't a movie."

“And you don’t?”

“I…” Mari stared at the table. “Sort of? I mean, you’d think that they would have some gadget to wipe our memories…”

“Why?”

“Because every conspiracy has a gadget to wipe the witnesses’ memories!” Mari said. She looked around, realized some of the people at the counter had glanced back. “It’s… It’s… just the way things are,” she said in a quieter voice. And it would make things easier… Because while she really did want to find out what was behind this, especially in their little town, she couldn't purge the image of the monster or the way it had just looked so wrong... Mari felt a twinge from the back of her head, a reminder of how it had just tossed her into the wall. How close it had come to killing Kado. If they’d just had some magic gadget, we wouldn’t have to make a choice right now. “What if we get involved and fuck things up, and some other kids get killed…”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“We won’t.” David shook his head. “I mean, if we find them, we just ask questions. They didn’t sound like they’d had anything to do with the… breach, but I really want to know. What if one opens up in the middle of class? Wouldn’t it be good to know?”

“Fine.” Mari glanced up as Marcy showed up with their milkshakes. She grabbed the big glass, enjoying how the cool surface was already wet with condensation. “But first, milkshakes.”

Because there was nothing, nothing worse than waiting and then seeing your milkshake turn into lukewarm slush.

After a few moments, Mari sat back and decided she could take a little time before she finished the last of the blessed brew. “How do we find them?”

“Ah,” David grinned. “Well, there’s nothing at the barn—we knew they took everything with them, and then the firefighters and police trampled everything that was left.”

“So, what can we do?”

“Well,” David looked down at his notebook. “They did leave some other information.”

“What?” Mari asked, lowering her voice. She leaned forward, glancing around the diner. But there were no mysterious figures in sunglasses and suits, just Judy regaling everyone with tales of her trip to New York.

“Remember the city traffic cams?”

“Errr… No?” Mari shook her head.

“Well, you never had to do a report on Allendale’s development, so you can be forgiven.”

“Thank you,” Mari said, putting her hand to her chest. “I’ll always treasure that. Now, spill!”

“Right. There are twenty cameras, set up through the city to track the traffic patterns. Since they actually don’t provide any private information, anyone can access the city database, and that has time-lapse photos going back for a full week.” David pulled out his phone and then pulled out a USB stick. “So I downloaded it. And right now, it’s here, on my phone, and on my USB stick, and I burned a DVD.”

Mari raised an eyebrow. “Paranoid much?”

“Man With the Bags. Magic rayguns. People who can file fake police reports. If I could do this without using my phone or computer, I would.”

Mari opened her mouth, closed it. “Point.”

David unlocked his phone, went to the settings page, and turned off both the WiFi and data connection. “Now, let me show you what I found…”

----------------------------------------

David watched as Mari leaned forward, looking down at the screen. He’d like to do this at home, but Mom was off shift, and that meant she’d be sleeping, and their house was small enough that it was really hard to get anything done without waking her up.

And she needed her sleep.

“Okay,” David said. “We start here. Oak Avenue and Fourth—that’s the intersection right before the turn off into the park.” He touched the screen, and the poor-quality black and white images started to change. “Four-second time-lapse stills.”

Mari stared at the image, brushing her hair back out of her eyes. “But two cameras, one for each street.”

“Right, and they hand off, so it’s really only a two-second gap.” He paused. “This is five minutes before we ran into them.”

There were cars stop-motioning through the intersection. And then the three-wheeler zipped through.

“That’s them!”

“Yeah, nice of them to use something that wasn’t common, like a van,” David said.

“I wonder why…” Mari murmured. “I mean, you’d think a conspiracy wouldn’t…”

“Dunno,” David said. “Maybe they like tadpole trikes?”

Mari looked at him and then lowered her voice. “Join our secret conspiracy, and we let you choose the vehicle!”

“And, in addition to ruling the world, we pay for your gas!” David replied.

“Gas? Our vehicles are electric! We’re the environmentally responsible conspiracy!” Mari replied, giggling at the thought.

David snorted, then laughed. Then he turned serious.

“So, it was here, and I ran back with the rest of the cameras.” David’s fingers flew over the touch screen. “And they didn’t come from the interstate. They turned at Oak and Main, then went down until they hit Main and Santiago, and then turned down that way… and they didn’t show up at Santiago and Wilson.”

“So they’re…”

“They had to have parked somewhere in that block.” David went to the map utility. “And it’s mostly little businesses, office buildings, and storage parks.”

“So, what do we do?”

“I’ve got my car. Want to go for a little drive?”

“Now?”

“Why not?” Mari looked up at David, then back to her milkshake. “Okay,” she said, then grabbed the milkshake. “But just in case we’re about to vanish forever, I’m finishing this.”

David chuckled as he grabbed his own shake. “Fine.” On the other hand… No. I really want to find out what this was all about.

----------------------------------------

David’s car was a late model car, not something from a used car lot. Mari remembered how some of the kids had mentioned that David was really lucky to have a mom who just gave him a new car.

Mari snorted. His mom had been the one to decide what type of car he was going to buy. David’s first two choices had been used cars, or as Mrs. Wallis said, “coffin models.” Working as a paramedic made her really sensitive when it came to car safety. So she’d gone in on sharing the cost of a better car with her son, and David was paying her back on a schedule.

David unlocked the doors, and Mari got into the passenger seat, buckling up while David started the engine.

“So, ready?” David asked.

“If we get disintegrated, I told you so.”

“And you’ll do that how?”

“Via my annoyed ghostly figure.”

David shook his head and pulled out into the sparse midday traffic. Mari quickly checked her phone. Good. No messages. No blow-ups at home.

“So, what are you taking this year?” Mari asked.

“AP English and Math. They didn’t have history for this year,” David said.

“AP English?” Mari made a face.

“Good selection, at least that’s what Mom said. She’s been hinting that a lawyer could be a good choice.” David’s voice dropped on that last word.

Whups, Danger, Danger, Mari Miller! David’s dad had been a lawyer.

“Well, I guess it’d come in handy. Sis tells me that every class wants you to write, a lot. So at least English wouldn’t go to waste.”

“Yeah,” David said. “Here we are.”

“We’re two blocks… Oh, right, yeah.” Secret conspiracy…

David parked on the side of the road, just in front of a no-parking zone, so there was no chance of them getting boxed in.

Mari hoped that was just David hating having to try to get out when some idiot parked six inches in front of your car, and not him worrying about them being chased.

“One day, I will drive you,” Mari said.

“Actually, isn’t it six months?” David asked.

“Yes. Six months until the State of California lets me have passengers,” Mari said as she opened the door and got out, the hot air washing over her face.

“Good. Six months until I need life insurance.” David closed the door and locked the car. “Not a lot of people…”

“Do you blame them? It must be 105.” Mari looked around the street. There were a few people, but they were all walking to someplace, not just wandering. Also, most of the stores on the street were for businesses, not places you'd go to window shop at.

We’re really going to stand out.

“I wonder if we should come back later…” David muttered.

“Two teens, wandering around at night?” Mari asked. “Look at the street. It’s all nine to five businesses. I really don’t want to explain to Mom and Dad why the cops are bringing us home.”

“Good point. Okay, let’s go,” David said.

Mari smiled at her friend, then ran her fingers through her hair. It’s already getting sweaty, but I guess that’s just the price we pay for tracking down a conspiracy. “Right, let’s go.”

And with that, the two teens headed down the sidewalk to Santiago Road.